Dead broke Spain can't afford to prop up renewables anymore. The Spanish government is cutting the numbers of hours in a day it's prepared to pay for "clean" energy.
Estimates put the investment in solar energy in Spain at €18bn - but the investment was predicated, as it is with all flakey renewables, on taxpayer subsidies. With …

Careful throwing stones here, are we?

It's pretty normal and expectable that an industry hit by cutbacks is making noise.

Then again paying out subsidies to something that you think is important for your countries' future is a normal thing as well. You can well argue they're spending less on subsidizing fossil fuels, but then again these are known to be on the way out and are mostly produced outside Spain.

However if you do look at the history of Spanish owned petrol group Repsol YPF and their success in Spain and Latin america you will find that back in the old days this was enabled by... subsidies!

I think there are certainly worse things to spend money on than renewables. Anyway, this is a politics question and it was on the agenda when this government was voted into office.

Now if we look at the tone in which you ridicule "dead broke Spain" shall we remember that the UK has both a larger annual deficit and total debt? And yes, we're talking percentages of GDP already, so the UK's stronger economy is already factored in.

Fair and balanced?

While I agree that most solar energy subsidies are grossly excessive the report neglects that most energy production enjoys subsidy of one form of another. Does your economist have the figures for the cost per employee of the nuclear subsidy?

Economically Spain's subsidy of electricity consumption through price controls is probably an even bigger burden but politically more difficult to remove.

As to the reference about digging and filling holes - this is perfectly good economics cf. both deforestation and subsequent reforestation be counted as growth. Doesn't make it sensible but it is good economics.

actually

deforestation and reforestation can be very profitable - just like growing crops, you grow a forest, you cut it down to make paper/chairs/etc you then plant a forest, you then move to the forest you grew a year later then the one you just cut down and start again...

Re: Making money

Generates solar electricity at night

It doesn't take much of an IQ[1] to realise that when you get paid more to squirt electricity back into the grid than you shell out to buy it in the first place, that the best way to make money is to take a wire from your mains outlet and feed it back in through your "solar" credit meter (OK, a little more complex than that). Result: free cash.

However it does rather take the wotsit when you do that at night. Even though it took the spanish authorities a while to realise that their expensively subsidised solar arrays were running on moonlight.

It's a shame that all this entrepreneurial creativity can't be harnessed to actually producing stuff the country can sell, but I suppose when the controls are as lax as this, you can't really blame the solar people for taking advantage.

[1] though apparently more of an IQ than the people who dreamed up this scheme could muster.

The second part (at least insofar as solar) is changing rapidly. Thanks to a glut of PV panels on the market, solar is costing manufacturers around ~$1.50 USD / Wp (on average). It used to cost $5 USD per watt, and in the early 1980's, the figures reached horrendous heights. By end-of-year, PV* production should cost around $0.75 - $1.45 USD / Wp, depending on quality (the lower end being thin-film, the upper mono/polycrystal silicon - you get what you pay for, though).

* For everyone else: PV = Photovoltaic :)

Now note that these costs are rapidly approaching the cost of oil-produced energy, and IIRC is below the cost of wind-generation, which is also dropping. As economies of scale kick in, things get even cheaper. Currently, there are but a handful of facilities capable of producing at least 500MW worth of panels per year - a couple in the EU, one in the Western Hemisphere (come Q3 - and that corp is German-owned), and I think one or two in Asia. In the next five years, I suspect that the total number of factories at this level of output will double, perhaps triple (though the majority will likely be in Asia).

At that point, PV solar should be cheap enough to install that tariffs (the official term for "subsidy" in most countries) will be largely unnecessary in most nations (depending on energy costs, etc).

Now for some irony. The Spanish PV guys are whining, but even now, Germany is beginning to drop theirs. Now for the funny part - the big German solar manufacturers: Q-Cells and SolarWorld AG stand out -- they are #2 and #3 in the world, respectively -- really aren't seeing problems with Merkel cutting back the solar tariff in their own stomping grounds (now mind you, the German PV market is pretty saturated, but still...)

Long story short - the big boys aren't seeing too much problem with the state of tariffs. Sure, they'd love to see them - it only boosts sales. OTOH, they've figured it into their projections and can survive regardless, given the momentum that PV solar has gained, and is continuing to gain.

Not sure about wind - I don't hang around that segment ( I do however hang around the Solar bits of the renewables industry... far too much, methinks :) ).

ah well

The real problem here...

...is that all the other voters are stupid (other than me and you that is). They will continue to elect do-gooders with crank agendas on the basis of their apparently sincere good intent, without any examination of the practicality of the scheme or consideration of the possible unintended side effects.

On top of that, in Britain we don't even realize that we are paying for the foolishness because the subsidies have been stealthed. Instead of directly throwing taxpayer's money at the wind farmers, the green leaning labour politicians have required the privatized electricity suppliers to buy a percentage of their power from "renewable" sources whatever the price. This is similar to the wheeze by which they destroyed the private rental market in the 60s and 70s, by legislating more and more rights for tenants until no one would rent properties anymore. Buying votes with other people's money only works for a while, how long will buying green votes by putting up every voter's electricity bill work?

Job subsidies

If energy must pay it's way, what about transport? Or public health?

The next time you get on a bus, or use the underground, or use your National Health service (if you're lucky enough to live in a country that has one), you might want to rethink this notion that each and every transaction must be a profitable one for the provider of the good or service.

Better yet

Solar isn't ready

As far as I know, no one has made a solar energy system that puts out more power than it took to make and run it, at least not on a scale where its useful. Spain has massive amounts of sunshine, but even with mirrors and boilers rather than crappy cells, the returns over lifetime are marginal once maintenance is allowed for.

On the other hand, what's the alternative? Cheaper systems that pollute more? Nuclear? It's not all about cash in hand, although in a banking crisis (let's not forget that this is a BANKing crisis we're in) cash in the hand speaks a lot louder than clean air 10 years away.

The subsidy was so out of line

that it makes financial sense to hook up arc light and shine on the solar panel, indoor. Hell, one of these cheaters was caught only because he let his diesel generator that's tied to the 'green grid' to run day and night.

Sending our lads die in the desert once a decade is so much more efficient

Remind me: how much did the last 3 middle-east wars cost us again?

The ones which absolutely, positively were not about oil.

When criticising renewables for requiring subsidy, please at least compare like with like.

Our middle-east policy is a direct subsidy to the oil industry and you should explicitly factor that in to your sums, as you should the external costs of fossil fuels (the ones that BP are being so forcibly reminded of right now at the rate of 5,000 bpd).

There are other external costs, of course, like those 25,000-50,000 annual premature deaths (source below) from urban air pollution caused primarily by combustion by-products like airborne particulates. Last time I checked, solar didn't cause any of those. Again, a direct externalisation of costs. What's the cost of long term chronic respiratory diseases to the NHS and in lost productivity?

Of course fossil fuels are cheap: none of the costs are built into the price.

Your ire would be better directed at the crappy state of affairs that allows this gross state of affairs to continue.

spoilt it right at the end

the only thing that loses you credibility faster than quoting wikipedia as a reference to back up a position is quoting the Daily Wail. Now I realise I just wasted a minute reading your words. (and another minute responding to them)

Solar in Spain? Surely not.

Last time I was in Spain, I remember madly climbing up to some ancient fortress viewpoint "in the midday sun" and looking down at the roofs of the city below, and being astonished that there were only about two solar hot water systems amongst all the thousands of buildings.

Sure, photovoltaic is uneconomic compared to the current cost of fossil fuels. But in a city like Malaga, solar hot water is a no-brainer. Yet the energy project that was in the news when I was there was the construction of an undersea pipeline to get gas from N. Africa.

Price Drops

Solar prices have been dropping fast. Panel prices dropped well over 50% since late 08.

The German government who have been guiding the industry towards lower prices year by year were caught by surprise and had to quickly vote in an additional subsidy price cut on top of their usual yearly subsidy drops this year. So the industry's prices have been dropping more quickly than experts had originally predicted.

All the porkbarreling, Spain can do better

Wouldn't it be a more sensible idea to spin off an investment company with a clear mandate to invest in /this/ list of desirable goals, and do away with subsidies?

Then again, I also sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to give each person in the country their fair share right away. Or, you know, just not raise the tax in the first place. But making sense is something governments are incapable of doing. Well, maybe we can stuff'em in a spaceship or something.

Errr .... factually incorrect about renewables costing that much more!

The deal we have today with the coal/gas/oil is one from history. A few million years ago these wee animals and plants lived, they died, and their decomposing bodies over many millions of years became the fuel we use today. This 'carbon' and other nasties from rotten dead things is histories global warming and pollution that never happened, but was contained.

If we dig up and burn these rotten corpses, we release the poison and global warming into our century. This is simple stuff I hope the author can understand.

Now here comes the rub....

For the last few hundred years we have been doing the above, and it all seemed fine, until a bunch of these damn green people discovered the bit about smoke not just being coloured air, but full of nasty things we humans and animals and plants don't like so much (its know as poison) and then there is the global warming issue still to contend with!

So, for these couple of hundred years we just burnt the stuff and were superbly happy about it and thought *bollocks to cleaning it up*.

If today we clean up this mess we make, coal,gas,oil would become prohibitively expensive. Fortunately we don't, so that's why its all cheap. Phew!

However, the 'renewables' currently take into account most of their 'clean-up', by not creating the poison and pollution today for another generation to deal with. This offsets the costs from tomorrows generations to our own - and rightfully so.

Though it still peeves me that we have to now pay for what Edison and his chums began.

So if all things were equal, the dirty energy we rely on today - if we cleaned up the mess after using it, your £1.20 a litre of petrol is likely to be £5 or £10 a litre, making it comparable with these 'clean' things.

The reality is we simply don't clean up after using these dirty fuels as much as we should.

Colin

Too simple by half, Colin.

"If we dig up and burn these rotten corpses, we release the poison and global warming into our century. This is simple stuff I hope the author can understand."

Dearie me. You're referring to externalities, and in a very emotive and childlike way. We consider fossil fuels to be worth the cost, because they're a fantastic energy source that has been our stepping stone into a modern industrial society. We wouldn't have got the baby incubators and penicillin, and lower infant mortality rates, without this infrastructure.

So ou really should say a little thank-you prayer to fossil fuels.

"it still peeves me that we have to now pay for what Edison and his chums began."

You and only a few other (privileged) people. The problem is not enough have access to it. Try asking expressing your view in Africa.

Isn't it about using what resources you've got?

Spain is a country with high amounts of solar power and little in the way of fossil fuels. Before this, there wasn't technology to get power out of the sun, and hence the fossil fuel infrastructure was built (will someone tell me that it was without subsidies?)... Now that there is a way to avoid paying fuel bills, and hence the government is trying to build up another energy infrastructure with subsidies...